1st	The Head Priest said, “Taya life is a way of living daily life in which one experiences true encounter.”
	2nd	The Head Priest said, “The ‘Original Prayer’ is the expression of the great compassion through which Tathagata awakens us to our fundamental task of ‘benefiting self and others’, a task that lies at the root of our existence. That is a prayer of incomparable depths.”
	3rd	The Head Priest said, “Looking back over his life before enlightenment, Daigyoin-sama declared that the only thing he had learned through academic study had been the importance of ‘benefiting self and others’. In other words, the importance of true encounter with people is ‘the only academic knowledge’ we need for our birth in the Pure Land.”
	4th	The Head Priest said, “True encounter is ultimately the rediscovery of the Parental Mind that has been waiting and waiting for our awakening.”
	5th	The Head Priest said, “How can encounter best be described? It is not that we come to realize the minds of others on our own but that our minds and those of others change in line with one another during such encounter.”
	6th
	7th	The Head Priest said, “If you don’t think of others but only of yourself, conflict will arise.”
	8th	The Head Priest said, “The true source of the dana (giving) mind lies in the fact that our parents have brought us up, their small and helpless children, with devoted and unconditional love.”
	9th	The Head Priest said, “The Buddha-dharma is not what we understand but what we continue to listen to.”
	10th	An old priest said, “Filial piety is responding to the true intention of our parents, not following our own imagination.”
	11st	The Head Priest said, “It is through our bodies that we listen to the Buddha-dharma. By using our bodies we learn it. Buddhism understood by our brains is all but useless.”
	12th	A young man living at the temple said, “In the past I always thought the reason I found myself here at the temple was to escape suffering and attain happiness. But then the Head Priest told me, ‘The moment you become aware of your suffering is the moment you begin to understand how meaningful it is for you to listen to others with great humility.’ I shall never forget those words.”
	13th	A young man living at the temple said, “I understood that the purpose of living at the temple was to look back over my past. Then the Head Priest said to me, ‘Listen to those around you and take their words to heart as a personal challenge to you. In that way you will be able to comprehend your past in a deeper dimension’.”
	14th	The Head Priest said, “If you lie merely to protect yourself, the number of friends you will lose in the future will far exceed the number of friends you have at present.
	15th	A young man, who had just entered a taya house, said, “My purpose in coming to live in this taya house is to understand how it is my parents are so full of light living here.”
	16th	A young man living at the temple said, “When you live in a taya house, those around you will tell you frankly even those things you might not like to hear from school friends, parents or siblings. Consequently I really feel the need to live here.”
	17th	A young man living in a taya house said, “Before coming to live in the temple I think I was very insensitive. But now I surprise myself by the way I am gradually becoming able to care for others.”
	18th	The Head Priest said, “The nembutsu realize itself within the passage of time, never being an object of our understanding. It is the essence of our ‘practice’.”
	19th	The Head Priest said, “The Buddha-dharma is a matter of ‘practice’ and ‘faith’ and nothing else. Anything that you grasp with your intellect can only lead to delusion.”
	20th	The Head Priest said, “Nowadays it is vital that you meet someone you can confide in and trust with your problems.”
	21st	A young man living at the temple said, “We tend to try and escape our present situation by lying but such lies eventually only lead to greater suffering. Even if we suffer, we should at least remember to be open and continue to listen to others.”
	22nd	Reverend Tetsuo Kamada said, “It is because we have been neglecting religion that we have got such an accumulation of problems in our present society. It means we have forgotten how to worship and show respect.”
	23rd	The Head Priest said, “Those who receive the Buddha-dharma are more important as a foundation of the Sangha than those who teach it.”
	24th	The Head Priest said, “The fulfillment of the Original Prayer refers to ‘true encounter’ between people, the discovery of friends and spiritual exchange. Positively speaking, such fulfillment is not an end in itself but our starting point.”
	25th	The Head Priest said, “What is known in our tradition as ‘accumulated good’ is grateful appreciation of one’s entire past, manifested in respecting one’s master with great humility.”
	26th	A young Dharma friend said, “For the last twenty years I always considered that my parents and I had a good relationship. But now being in this temple, awakened to what the Buddha has done for me and surrounded by good Dharma friends, I feel as if we had only just attained a true parent and child relationship for the very first time.”
	27th	The Head Priest said, “We can attain the path that lies beyond the duality of good and evil by becoming aware of it. To put it more accurately, we are awakened to it [through others]. It is therefore very important for us to have good friends and teachers.”
	28th	The Head Priest said, “If parents and those who are in a position to teach children fail to remember our reflection on their own rebellious stage and adolescence or if they allow immature young people criticize adults and the environment just as they please, then such people will lose their own natural capacity for observation and healthy criticism.”
	29th	The Head Priest said, “In order to ‘heal a family’, families that are burdened with similar problems should try and solve their difficulties by sharing and discussing them with other such families. When you face your problems in this way, you will find the truth of the symbiotic way of life.”
	30th	The Head Priest said, “Family break up is a social problem of the modern world, not only in the West but also in the East. To solve this problem we must cherish the restoration of family life as our ideal and show respect towards those around us.”
	31st	The Head Priest said, “Children do not think about the sort of thoughts their parents may be having and parents never divulge their innermost thoughts to their children. That is the problem currently facing our families.”